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1769.

CARVER'S Travels in N. America, p. 74.

I here took notice, says Le BRUYN, of a fruit they call Chamama, or Woman's Breast, because it is in that shape; it is very wholesome, and of a very pleasant scent. It is not very unlike the white melons, but it is firmer, and nearly of the color of the China-orange; some of them are also of the same size, and the Armenians told me, they grow also at Ispahan, where they are in great request, and where they carry them in the hand by way of nosegay. Some of them are of the size of a small melon, and spotted with red, yellow, and green; the seed of these is small and white: there are others which are all red. It is a grateful refreshment; which abounds in this country.

Vol. i. p. 164.

Now if these melons were plentiful in Mesopotamia, but rare in Judea, in the days of Reuben, who by chance found some, which he brought to his mother, we have discovered, I think, a fruit which bids fairer to be the true dudaim, than any "plant of a strong nauseous smell, and unfit for eating."

Editor of Calmet, Frag. vol. ii. p. 220. DEUSINGIUS also was of opinion, that the dudaim were a species of melons, which perfume the hands. See No. 456, 560, 557, 562.

1770. [Gen. xxx. 32.] The color of the goat is various, being either black, brown, white, or spotted. The skin is peculiarly well adapted for the glove-manufactory, especially that of the kid: abroad it is dressed and made into stockings, bed-ticks, bolsters, bed hangings in the houses, sheets and even shirts. As it takes a dye better than any other skin, it was formerly much used for hangings in the houses of people of fortune, being susceptible of the richest colors; and when flowered and ornamented with gold and silver, became an elegant and superb furniture.

1771.

Dr. REES'S Cyclopedia, Art. Capra.

In the province of Kerman in Persia, sheep's wool is all worked without dye, in its natural colors which are of three sorts, the first brown, the second of a speckled gray, and the third of a milk-white: this last is the most esteemed, being employed entirely in making garments for their men of law, and priests, who wear nothing else. (PINKERTON'S Coll. vol. ix. p. 372.) — These frugal and industrious people, however, manufacture from the other two sorts of wool, several kinds of light stuffs, which in point of beauty and lustre are not at all inferior to silk.

Ibid.

1772. [ 39.] All animals may possess a tendency to be coloured somewhat like the colors they most frequently inspect. Thus the snake, the wild cat, and leopard, are so coloured as to resemble dark leaves and their lighter interstices; birds resemble the color of the brown ground, or the green hedges, which they frequent; and moths and butterflies are coloured like flowers which they rob of their honey.

The eggs of birds are so coloured as to resemble the color of the adjacent objects and their interstices. The eggs of hedge-birds are greenish with dark spots; those of crows and magpies are white with dark spots, and those of larks and partridges are russet or brown, like their nests or situations.

Our domesticated animals lose their natural colors, and break into great variety, as horses, dogs, pigeons. Dr. DARWIN'S Zoonomia, sect. xxxix. 5. 1.

See No. 987, 881.

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1781. [40.] The men and women till the lands, and gather in the crops in all Nordland. — But a single night has often cropped the whole; and when the colonist rises in the morning he finds the grass withered, the corn-ears blemished, his labor lost, and his hopes destroyed by the frost, in the middle of summer. These sudden and unforeseen frosts happen from the end of July to the beginning of August, the hottest part of the year. I am of opinion, says the intelligent EHRENMALM, that this destructive phenomenon may arise from the vapors of the acid waters which are in the soil. When this vapor, he observes, rises in fogs, it dissipates, and occasions no injury; but when it cannot exhale

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1782. [Gen. xxxi. 40.] In Pennsylvania, there are nightly frosts every month in the year, except in July; and even in that month when the heat is greater than at any other time of the year, there intervene days in which a fire is found very agreeable.

A much greater degree of heat can be borne without inconvenience, where the air is dry, than where it is moist; consequently on mountains, rather than in vallies.

After the extreme hot days of America, as soon as the sun is down, heavy dews generally fall, and the night becomes very cold.

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1787. [Gen. xxxii. 1.] The word angel comes from the Greek angelos, which literally signifies, a messenger, or as translated in some of our Bibles a tidings-bringer. The Hebrew word malak, from laac, to send, minister to, employ, is nearly of the same import; it is a name, not of nature but of office, and hence it is applied indifferently to a human agent or messenger, 2 Sam. ii. 5. xi. 19, 22, 23, 25. Prov. xiii. 17.to a prophet, Hagg. i. 13. to a priest, Mal. ii. 7. Compare Eccles. ii. 6.- to celestial spirits, Ps. ciii. 19, 20, 22. civ. 4. cxlviii. 2, 3, 4. Job iv. 18. Dr. A. CLARKE.

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1791. [17. Made booths] Such as are still erected by the Bedouin Arabs, who live in tents called houses of hair, from the material they are made of. These, says Dr. SHAW, are what the Antients called Mapalia, which were then, as they are to this day, secured from the heat and inclemency of the weather, only by a covering of such haircloth as constitute our coal-sacks. Some hundreds of those tents, of an oblong figure not unlike the bottom of a ship turned upside down, are often placed in a circle and constitute a Dou-war. Gen. xxv. 27. Trav. p. 286, folio.

1792. The Abyssinian mode of forming an encampment is simple and very convenient, where tents might prove too serious an incumbrance. On their arrival at a station, where they intend to stay any time, the men begin to cut down, with the large knives which they carry about them, a number of green boughs, and these they

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1795.

Bib. Research. Introduc. p. 66.

Before the city] In Arabia the walls of the ordinary houses are of mud mixed with dung; and the roof is thatched with a sort of grass which is there very common. Around by the walls within is a range of beds made of straw, on which, notwithstanding their simplicity, a person may either sit or lie commodiously enough. Such at house is not sufficiently large to be divided into separate apartments; it has seldom windows, and its door is only a straw mat. When an Arab has a family and cattle, he builds for their accommodation several such huts, and incloses the whole with a strong wooden fence. The cities of Arabia therefore, cannot in population be proportionate to their

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1800. [

4.] The Pagoda-tree, incorrectly described by PLINY (Nat. Hist. lib. xii. cap. 5) as the Indian figtree, rises to the height of the common chesnut, but throws out from its brauches a number of fibres, which become so long that they at last hang down to the ground, where they take root and produce other trees of the same kind perfectly similar to the parent-tree. In this manner they continue till from one tree there at length arises a whole forest. The Indians are accustomed to plant such trees in the neighbourhood of their temples or pagodas, to defend the people when assembled from the rain and the sun. — This tree is described by NIERENBERG in his Natural History, lib. xiv. cap. 38. See BARTOLOMEO by Johnston, p. 421.

Verse 7.] Not El-beth-el, but simply Bethel. See One of De Rossi's MSS. the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, and some copies of the Arabic.

1801. [8.] Rebekah's death is not noticed, because she had undoubtedly died while Jacob was with Laban and either Esau kept no records, or they were not copied by Moses.

1802. In many parts of Hindostan are mosques and mausoleums, built by the Mahomedan princes, near the sepulchres of their nurses. They are excited by a grateful affection to erect these structures, in memory of those, who with maternal anxiety watched over their helpless infancy: thus it has been from time immemorial.

FORBES' Oriental Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 141.

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1813

The mule produced from a horse and the ass resembles the horse externally with his ears, main, and tail; but has the nature or manners of an ass: while the Hinnus, or creature produced from a male-ass, and a mare, resembles the father externally in stature, ash-color, and the black cross, having the nature or manners of a horse. The breed from Spanish rams and Swedish ewes resembled the Spanish sheep in wool, stature, and external form; but was as hardy as the Swedish sheep; and the contrary of those which were produced from Swedish rams and Spanish ewes. The offspring from the male-goat of Angora, and the Swedish female-goat had long soft camel's hair; but that from the male Swedish goat, and the female cue of Angora, had no improvement of their wool. An English ram without horns, and a Swedish horned ewe, produced sheep without horns. Aman. Acad. vol. vi. p. 13.

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1809. [15.] The word Omrâ, the plural of Emir, is given as a title to all the nobility of the first rank, in the empire of the Mogul, and in Tartary. (See FRASER'S His

1814. [28-30.] Even these Troglodytes, who lived in the same country before the Edomites, in subterraneous habitations, and who sprang not from Abraham,

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